of our food and timber came by quoffa cart, but the fliers which brought in specialized equipment for the yards lay neatly parked and it would be childish to suppose they would not be regarded as my target. So I avoided their dark bulks as they lay, neatly aligned, in their parks. Guards paced before them, weapons glinting.
Then I heard the first fierce howls.
I knew.
Werstings!
They would pick up my scent at the stables. That was certain sure. The black-and-white-striped devilish forms would come bounding through the pink moons-light, tongues lolling, eyes bright, panting in their eagerness to sink their fangs into me. They were friendly enough to a friend; to the quarry they were death.
Well, I had escaped from the Manhounds of Faol. They were a scary enough bunch, Zair knows. So I ran on swiftly through the shadows and skirted the parked fliers and the cargo carts. Slaves did all this manual labor of unloading and loading and carting. I knew little of it, here in Sumbakir. The fitting shed lifted against the star glitter.
Already the ridge showed a pink icing as the Twins rose higher in the sky. Soon their light would flood down and the shadows would lessen. And shadows were my best friends this night. The guard had been alerted. The Hamalese with their laws are assured that their lower officers obey their orders and post their sentries, and I have noticed that guards are a mark of a lawful country as well as a lawless; whether one influences the other is hard to say. He peered about, and I caught the gleam of his eyes beneath the rim of his helmet. His thraxter lay in its scabbard. His shield hung over his left shoulder and he grasped his stux as though ready to slay the ghastly minions of Hanitcha the Harrower in the next moment.
Well, he did not have phantom devils of the imagination to face. He faced me, although he did not realize it, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy.
I treated him gently. A distracting noise, a quiet leap, and he fell unconscious at my feet. I dragged him in through the double-doors and shut them as quietly as I could. High grilled and fretted skylights in the roof admitted a faint pink glow, enough to make my way between the dark bulks of the waiting fliers. I felt the ghostly atmosphere of this place. Soon with the morning suns the workers would open the doors and begin their daily labors; for the moment the whole space lay silent and deserted and strange. In the black-walled room I found benches strewn with soldering apparatus, with the fires banked and aglow, piles of empty tins with their lids, and piles of dirt — sand, gravel, grit. I sifted it in my fingers. This was packed tightly into the tins and the lids were fastened. Where from this common dirt could come the magical lifting power of the voller?
I suppose, in all honesty, you who listen to these tapes spinning through the heads must have already guessed. And I too, I confess, shared a premonitory breeze of understanding, and with understanding -
rejection.
For — how could it be?
Fliers of the deep-hold, square build called binhoys in Hamal arrived here regularly. The bottom doors were opened and the dirt poured out to form the jealously guarded piles. I had seen binhoys like these flying from the Heavenly Mines. They had been loaded with the broken, crushed, and refined rock the poor devils of slaves had dug from the mountain quarries. As I sifted the dirt in my fingers I think I understood that this dirt had been mixed with the refined rock from the Heavenly Mines; I understood but I did not believe.
Just to make sure I slid the chisel down from my sleeve and forced open the lid of a freshly soldered tin. It was as I expected filled with the dirt from the piles about me; but, also, there glittered among the grit and sand and dirt the tiny chips of rock that, I was sure, had come from the Heavenly Mines. The shadows seemed to move as I padded out of the black-walled room and crossed the fitting shed and entered the red-walled room. Here, except for the absence of the piles of dirt, the scene was the same as the one I had left. This time when I opened a box it was empty. Delia’s father knew this. He had not lied. I opened another and then another. All were empty. A small door opened off the red-walled room and I pushed it open and went into the storeroom beyond. The entire space was filled with pottery amphorae, large jars with their pointed ends sunk into the earth. They were stoppered and waxed and sealed and secured with wires.
I smashed the thraxter against one rotund jar and the amphora collapsed and fell in shards. It was empty. But — it
A faint sickly sweet odor tasted foul on my tongue, as though some careless onker had left a slice of malsidge to go rotten in the room. I looked about, and there was nothing more I could do. Silver boxes of dirt and silver boxes of air!
Dirt and air!
About to curse a foul Makki-Grodno oath I halted, my hand reaching for my thraxter hilt. A sound, a slithery, scratchy, furtive sound from the closed double-doors brought me out into the shadows of the shed between the benches. At first I thought the sentry was recovering his senses, although I had thought he would remain unconscious longer than this, for I know to a nicety the value of my blows. Again that scratching and then the left- hand leaf of the doors groaned against its hinges — and I knew.
They can make the most devilish row when they are hunting, the werstings, ululating and shrieking and pounding down the trail after their prey. They can also move silently and swiftly and seize their quarry without warning. The nurdling cramphs almost had me.
The door eased back and the low lean shape of a wersting padded in. His head was down, his ears erect, his tail a bar like a sword. He saw me, standing there in the light from the moons, and he halted, and his companion of the pair sidled in through the half-open door.
Even then, in that moment, I noticed how two instinctive reactions battled to find first expression. Both werstings had found their quarry and now they wished to fling back their heads and howl their success to the night air, and so summon their hunting companions and their masters the Deldars of the Wersting Pack. The other instinct, the one that overcame them, was to put their heads down even lower, bare their fangs, and let their hackles bristle. Yellowy-white those fangs, cruel and sharp. Red the mouth and purplish-red the tongue. Greenish- yellow the eyes, with black pupils rounded and concentrated into complete attention upon me.
Perhaps those two werstings recognized more in me than a soldier of Hamal ever could. I gave them no chance. Vicious, deadly, cunning, feral, are werstings. A man does ill to run from them. Without a sound I leaped full at them with the brand in my fist upraised. They reacted with breathy snarls, lifting so as to slash me with their claws as well as attempt to hamstring me and then seize me by the throat. The thraxter slashed into the neck of the right-hand one, a controlled stroke. I followed on without a pause, ducking and avoiding the second’s lunge. Now he was howling, shrill ululations that would bring the guards running. I flicked the thraxter at him and he avoided it and sprang. I barely managed to dive flat and roll over and kick him mercilessly in the belly as he flew past. We both sprang up to renew the attack, but I was that fraction faster, and I buried the thraxter in his muscular chest as he scrabbled for me. I had to thrust with massive force to penetrate the plate of gristle beneath the skin; but, shrieking and foaming and attempting to claw at the blade, he died. I dragged the thraxter free, one foot on the black-and-white-striped corpse. I ran for the double-doors, closed them with a thump, and slotted the thick lenken beam into place in its iron staples. Now let a wersting try to sneak in!
Fresh yells broke from outside. They quieted and I heard a voice, a harsh, intemperate, hectoring voice, the foul-mouthed bellowing voice of Ornol ham Feoste, Kov of Apulad.
“You, Chaadur! We know you are in there! Come out quietly, you kleesh, and obey the law! Or, by Hanitcha the Harrower, we’ll break in and tear the beating heart out of you and feed it to the werstings!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I, Dray Prescot, of Earth and of Kregen, had failed.
Failed miserably. Failed utterly.
The armed guards and soldiers of Kov Ornol surrounded the shed. The ferocious snarls and howls of the werstings resounded through the pink-lit gloom and I could hear their claws scrabbling at the doors. The Kov and
