The hunter wiped a huge hand across his red-bearded face. "Everybody went crazy," he said thickly.
"Some got killed or hurt. Some got away, like us. The rest were caught again." He jerked his head back. "They're coming this way. They're hunting us. They hunt by scent, the gray beasts do."
"Then we've got to get going." Ciaran turned around. "Mouse. You, Mousie! Snap out of it, honey.
It's all right now."
She shivered and choked over her breath, and the hermit fixed them both with pale, mad eyes.
"It was a warning," he said. "A portent of judgment, when only the pure shall be saved." He pointed a bony finger at Ciaran. "I told you that evil could not prevail against devils!"
That got through to Mouse. Sense came back into her black eyes. She took a step toward the hermit and let go.
"Don't you call him evil?or me either! We've never hurt anybody yet, beyond lifting a little food or a trinket. And besides, who the hell are you to talk! Anybody as handy with a picklock as you are has had plenty of practice . . . ."
Mouse paused for breath, and Ciaran got a look at the hermit's face. His stomach quivered. He tried to shut Mouse up, but she was feeling better and beginning to enjoy herself. She plunged into a detailed analysis of the hermit's physique and heredity. She had a vivid and inventive mind.
Ciaran finally got his hand over her mouth, taking care not to get bitten. "Nice going," he said, "but we've got to get out of here. You can finish later."
She started to heel his shins, and then quite suddenly she stopped and stiffened up under his hands.
She was looking at the hermit. Ciaran looked, too. His insides knotted, froze, and began to do tricks.
The hermit said quietly, "You are finished now." His pale eyes held them, and there was nothing human about his gaze, or the cold calm of his voice.
"You are evil. You are thieves?and I know, for I was a thief myself. You have the filth of the world on you, and no wish to clean it off."
He moved toward them. It was hardly a step, hardly more than an inclination of the body, but Ciaran gave back before it.
"I killed a man. I took a life in sin and anger, and now I have made my peace. You have not. You will not. And if need comes, I can kill again?without remorse."
He could, too. There was nothing ludicrous about him now. He was stating simple fact, and the dignity of him was awesome. Ciaran scowled down at the dust.
"Hell," he said, "we're sorry, Father. Mouse has a quick tongue, and we've both had a bad scare. She didn't mean it. We respect any man's conscience."
There was a cold, hard silence, and then the third man cried out with a sort of subdued fury:
"Let's go! Do you want to get caught again?"
He was a gnarled, knotty, powerful little man, beginning to grizzle but not to slow down. He wore a kilt of skins. His hide was dark and tough as leather, his hazel eyes set in nests of wrinkles.
The hunter, who had been hearing nothing but noises going back and forth over his head, turned and led off down the gully. The others followed, still not speaking.
Ciaran was thinking, He's crazy. He's clear off his head?and of all the things we didn't need, a crazy hermit heads the list!
There was a cold spot between his shoulders that wouldn't go away even when he started sweating with exertion.
The gully was evidently a main trail to Somewhere. There were many signs of recent passage by a lot of people, including an occasional body kicked off to the side and left to dry.
The little knotty man, who was a trapper named Ram, examined the bodies with a terrible stony look in his eyes.
"My wife and my first son," he said briefly. "The gray beasts took them while I was gone."
He turned grimly away.
Ciaran was glad when the bodies proved to be the wrong ones.
Ram and the big red hunter took turns scaling the cleft walls for a look. Mouse said something about taking to the face of the Plains where they wouldn't be hemmed in. They looked at her grimly.
"The gray beasts are up there," they said. "Flanking us. If we go up, they'll only take us and chain us again."
Ciaran's heart took a big, staggering jump. "In other words, they're herding us. We're going the way
they want us to, so they don't bother to round us up."
The hunter nodded professionally. "Is a good plan."
"Oh, fine!" snarled Ciaran. "What I want to know is, is there any way out?"
The hunter shrugged.
"I'm going on anyway," said Ram. "My wife and son . . . ."
Ciaran thought about the Stone of Destiny, and was rather glad there was no decision to make.
They went on, at an easy jog trot. By bits and pieces Ciaran built up the picture?raiding gangs of Kalds coming quietly onto isolated border villages, combing the brush and the forest for stragglers.
Where they took the humans, or why, nobody could guess.
The red hunter froze to a dead stop. The others crouched behind him, instinctively holding their breath.
The hunter whispered, "People. Many of them." His flat palm made an emphatic move for quiet.
Small cold prickles flared across Ciaran's skin. He found Mouse's hand in his and squeezed it.
Suddenly, with no more voice than the sigh of a breeze through bracken, the hermit laughed.
"Judgment," he whispered. "Great things moving." His pale eyes were fey. "Doom and destruction, a shadow across the world, a darkness and a dying."
He looked at them one by one, and threw his head back, laughing without sound, the stringy cords working in his throat.
"And of all of you, I alone have no fear!"
They went on, slowly, moving without sound in small shapeless puddles of shadow thrown by the floating sunballs. Ciaran found himself almost in the lead, beside the hunter.
They edged around a jog in the cleft wall. About ten feet ahead of them the cleft floor plunged underground, through a low opening shored with heavy timbers.
There were two Kalds lounging in front of it, watching their wands flash in the light.
The five humans stopped. The Kalds came toward them, almost lazily, running rough gray tongues over their shiny teeth. Their blood-pink eyes were bright with pleasure.
Ciaran groaned. "This is it. Shall we be brave, or just smart?"
The hunter cocked his huge fists. And then Ram let go a queer animal moan. He shoved past Ciaran and went to his knees beside something Ciaran hadn't noticed before.
A woman lay awkwardly against the base of the cliff. She was brown and stringy and not very young, with a plain, good face. A squat, thick-shouldered boy sprawled almost on top of her. There was a livid burn on the back of his neck. They were both dead.
Ciaran thought probably the woman had dropped from exhaustion, and the kid had died fighting to save her. He felt sick.
Ram put a hand on each of their faces. His own was stony and quite blank. After the first cry he didn't make a sound.
He got up and went for the Kald nearest to him.
3
He did it like an animal, quick and without thinking. The Kald was quick, too. It jabbed the wand at Ram, but the little brown man was coming so fast that it didn't stop him. He must have died in mid-leap, but his body knocked the Kald over and bore him down.
Ciaran followed him in a swift cat leap.
He heard the hunter grunting and snarling somewhere behind him, and the thudding of bare feet being very busy. He lost sight of the other Kald. He lost sight of everything but a muscular gray arm that was trying to pull a jewel-tipped wand from under Ram's corpse. There was a terrible stink of burned flesh.
Ciaran grabbed the gray wrist. He didn't bother with it, or the arm. He slid his grip up to the fingers, got his other hand beside it, and started wrenching.
Bone cracked and split. Ciaran worked desperately, from the thumb and the little finger. Flesh tore. Splinters of gray bone came through. Ciaran's hands slipped in the blood. The gray beast opened its mouth, but no sound ca
me. Ciaran decided then the things were dumb. It was human enough to sweat. Ciaran grabbed the wand.
A gray paw, the other one, came clawing for his throat around the bulk of Ram's shoulders. He flicked it with the wand. It went away, and Ciaran speared the jewel tip down hard against the Kald's throat.
After a while Mouse's voice came to him from somewhere. "It's done, Kiri. No use overcooking it."
It smelled done, all right. Ciaran got up. He looked at the wand in his hand, holding it away off.
He whistled.
Mouse said, "Stop admiring yourself and get going. The hunter says he can hear chains."
Ciaran looked around. The other Kald lay on the ground. Its neck seemed to be broken. The body of the squat, dark boy lay on top of it. The hunter said: "He didn't feel the wand. I think he'd be glad to be a club for killing one of them, if he knew it."
Ciaran said, "Yeah." He looked at Mouse. She seemed perfectly healthy. "Aren't women supposed to faint at things like this?"
She snorted. "I was born in the Thieves' Quarter. We used to roll skulls instead of pennies. They weren't so scarce."
"I think," said Ciaran, "the next time I get married I'll ask more questions. Let's go."
They went down the ramp leading under the Forbidden Plains. The hunter led, like a wary beast.
Ciaran brought up the rear. They both carried the stolen wands.
The hermit hadn't spoken a word, or moved a hand to help.
It was fairly dark there underground, but not cold. In fact, it was hotter than outside, and got worse as they went down. Ciaran could hear a sound like a hundred armorers beating on shields. Only louder. There was a feeling of a lot of people moving around but not talking much, and an occasional crash or metallic screaming that Ciaran didn't have any explanation for. He found himself not liking it.
They went a fairish way on an easy down-slope, and then the light got brighter. The hunter whispered, "Careful!" and slowed down. They drifted like four ghosts through an archway into a glow of clear bluish light.
They stood on a narrow ledge. Just here it was hand-smoothed, but on both sides it ran in nature-eroded roughness into a jumble of stalactites and wind-galleries. Above the ledge, in near darkness, was the high roof arch, and straight ahead, there was just space. Eventually, a long way off, Ciaran made out a wall of rock.
Below there was a pit. It was roughly barrel-shaped. It was deep. It was so deep that Ciaran had to crane over the edge to see bottom. Brilliant blue-white flares made it brighter than daylight about two-thirds of the way up the barrel.
There were human beings laboring in the glare. They were tiny things no bigger than ants from this height. They wore no chains, and Ciaran couldn't see any guards. But after the first look he quit worrying about any of that. The Thing growing up in the pit took all his attention.
It was built of metal. It rose and spread in intricate swooping curves of shining whiteness, filling the whole lower part of the cavern. Ciaran stared at it with a curious numb feeling of awe. The thing wasn't finished. He had not the faintest idea what it was for. But he was suddenly terrified of it. It was more than just the sheer crushing size of it, or the unfamiliar metallic construction that was like nothing he had seen or even dreamed of before. It was the thing itself.
It was Power. It was Strength. It was a Titan growing there in the belly of the world, getting ready to reach out and grip it and play with it, like Mouse gambling with an empty skull.
He knew, looking at it, that no human brain in his own scale and time of existence had conceived that shining monster, nor shaped of itself one smallest part of it.
The red hunter said simply, "I'm scared. And this smells like a trap."
Ciaran swallowed something that might have been his heart. "We're in it, pal, like it or don't. And we'd better get out of sight before that chain-gang runs into us."
Off to the side, along the rough part of the ledge where there were shadows and holes and pillars of rock, seemed the best bet. There was a way down to the cavern floor—a dizzy zig-zag of ledges, ladders, and steps. But once on it you were stuck, and no cover.
They edged off, going as fast as they dared. Mouse was breathing rather heavily and her face was white enough to make the brand show like a blood-drop between her brows.
The hermit seemed to be moving in a private world of his own. The sight of the shining giant had brought a queer blaze to his eyes, something Ciaran couldn't read and didn't like. Otherwise, he might as well have been dead. He hadn't spoken since he cursed them, back in the gully.
They crouched down out of sight among a forest of stalactites. Ciaran watched the ledge. He whispered, "They hunt by scent?"
The hunter nodded. "I think the other humans will cover us. Too many scents in this place. But how did they have those two waiting for us at the cave mouth?"
Ciaran shrugged. "Telepathy. Thought transference. Lots of the backwater people have it. Why not the Kalds?"
"You don't," said the hunter, "think of them as having human minds."
"Don't kid yourself. They think, all right. They're not human, but they're not true animals either."
"Did they think that?" The hunter pointed at the pit.
"No," said Ciaran slowly. "They didn't."
"Then who?" He broke off. "Quiet! Here they come."
Ciaran held his breath, peering one-eyed around a stalactite. The slave gang, with the gray guards, began to file out of the tunnel and down the steep descent to the bottom. There was no trouble. There was no trouble left in any of those people. There were several empty collars. There were also fewer Kalds. Some had stayed outside to track down the four murderous fugitives, which meant no escape at that end.
Ciaran got an idea. When the last of the line and the guards were safely over the edge he whispered, "Come on. We'll go down right on their tails."
Mouse gave him a startled look. He said impatiently, "They won't be looking back and up—I hope. And there won't be anybody else coming up while they're going down. You've got a better idea about getting down off this bloody perch, spill it!"
She didn't have, and the hunter nodded. "Is good. Let's go."
They went, like the very devil. Since all were professionals in their own line they didn't make any more fuss than so many leaves falling. The hermit followed silently. His pale eyes went to the shining monster in the pit at every opportunity.
He was fermenting some idea in his shaggy head. Ciaran had a hunch the safest thing would be to quietly trip him off into space. He resisted it, simply because knifing a man in a brawl was one thing and murdering an unsuspecting elderly man in cold blood was another.
Later, he swore a solemn oath to drop humanitarianism, but hard.
Nobody saw them. The Kalds and the people below were all too busy not breaking their necks to have eyes for anything else. Nobody came down behind them—a risk they had had to run. They were careful to keep a whole section of the descent between them and the slave gang.
It was a hell of a long way down. The metal monster grew and grew and slid up beside them, and then above them, towering against the vault. It was beautiful. Ciaran loved its beauty even while he hated and feared its strength.
Then he realized there were people working on it, clinging like flies to its white beams and arches.
Some worked with wands not very different from the one he carried, fusing metal joints in a sparkle of hot light. Others guided the huge metal pieces into place, bringing them up from the floor of the cavern on long ropes and fitting them delicately.
With a peculiar dizzy sensation, Ciaran realized there was no more weight to the metal than if it were feathers.
He prayed they could get past those workers without being seen, or at least without having an alarm spread. The four of them crawled down past two or three groups of them safely, and then one man, working fairly close to the cliff, raised his head and stared straight at them.
Ciaran began to make frantic signs. The man paid no attention to t
hem. Ciaran got a good look at his eyes. He let his hands drop.
"He doesn't see us," whispered Mouse slowly. "Is he blind?"
The man turned back to his work. It was an intricate fitting of small parts into a pierced frame.
Work that in all his wanderings Ciaran had never seen done anywhere, in any fashion.
He shivered. "No. He just—doesn't see us."
The big hunter licked his lips nervously, like a beast in a deadfall. His eyes glittered. The hermit laughed without any sound. They went on.
It was the same all the way down. Men and women looked at them, but didn't see.
In one place they paused to let the slave gang get farther ahead. There was a woman working not far out. She looked like a starved cat, gaunt ribs showing through torn rags. Her face was twisted with the sheer effort of breathing, but there was no expression in her eyes.
Quite suddenly, in the middle of an unfinished gesture, she collapsed like wet leather and fell.
Ciaran knew she was dead before her feet cleared the beam she was sitting on.
That happened twice more on the way down. Nobody paid any attention.
Mouse wiped moisture off her forehead and glared at Ciaran. "A fine place to spend a honeymoon. You and your lousy short cuts!"
For once Ciaran had no impulse to cuff her.
The last portion of the descent was covered by the backs of metal lean-tos full of heat and clamor.
The four slipped away into dense shadow between two of them, crouched behind a mound of scrap. They had a good view of what happened to the slave gang.
The Kalds guided it out between massive pillars of white metal that held up the giant web overhead.
Fires flared around the cliff foot. A hot blue-white glare beat down, partly from some unfamiliar light-sources fastened in the girders, partly from the mouths of furnaces hot beyond any heat Ciaran had ever dreamed of.
Men and women toiled sweating in the smoke and glare, and never looked at the newcomers in their chains. There were no guards.
The Kalds stopped the line in a clear space beyond the shacks and waited. They were all facing the same way, expectant, showing their bright gray teeth and rolling their blood-pink eyes.
Sea Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories Page 6