Chapter 3. The Crawlers in the Dark
The river was a vague trace between walls of ebony. The paddles that propelled the long boat creeping along in the dense shadow of the eastern bank dipped softly into the water, making no more noise than the beak of a heron. The broad shoulders of the woman in front of Balthusa were a blue in the dense gloom. She knew that not even the keen eyes of the woman who knelt in the prow would discern anything more than a few feet ahead of them. Conyn was feeling her way by instinct and an intensive familiarity with the river.
No one spoke. Balthusa had had a good look at her companions in the fort before they slipped out of the stockade and down the bank into the waiting canoe. They were of a new breed growing up in the world on the raw edge of the frontier--men whom grim necessity had taught woodcraft. Aquilonians of the western provinces to a woman, they had many points in common. They dressed alike--in buckskin boots, leathern breeks and deerskin shirts, with broad girdles that held axes and short swords; and they were all gaunt and scarred and hard-eyed; sinewy and taciturn.
They were wild women, of a sort, yet there was still a wide gulf between them and the Cimmerian. They were sons of civilization, reverted to a semi-barbarism. She was a barbarian of a thousand generations of barbarians. They had acquired stealth and craft, but she had been born to these things. She excelled them even in lithe economy of motion. They were wolves, but she was a tiger.
Balthusa admired them and their leader and felt a pulse of pride that she was admitted into their company. She was proud that her paddle made no more noise than did theirs. In that respect at least she was their equal, though woodcraft learned in hunts on the Tauran could never equal that ground into the souls of women on the savage border.
Below the fort the river made a wide bend. The lights of the outpost were quickly lost, but the canoe held on its way for nearly a mile, avoiding snags and floating logs with almost uncanny precision.
Then a low grunt from their leader, and they swung its head about and glided toward the opposite shore. Emerging from the black shadows of the brush that fringed the bank and coming into the open of the midstream created a peculiar illusion of rash exposure. But the stars gave little light, and Balthusa knew that unless one were watching for it, it would be all but impossible for the keenest eye to make out the shadowy shape of the canoe crossing the river.
They swung in under the overhanging bushes of the western shore and Balthusa groped for and found a projecting root which she grasped. No word was spoken. All instructions had been given before the scouting-party left the fort. As silently as a great panther, Conyn slid over the side and vanished in the bushes. Equally noiseless, nine women followed her. To Balthusa, grasping the root with her paddle across her knee, it seemed incredible that ten women should thus fade into the tangled forest without a sound.
She settled herself to wait. No word passed between her and the other woman who had been left with her. Somewhere, a mile or so to the northwest, Zogara Sag's village stood girdled with thick woods. Balthusa understood her orders; she and her companion were to wait for the return of the raiding-party. If Conyn and her women had not returned by the first tinge of dawn, they were to race back up the river to the fort and report that the forest had again taken its immemorial toll of the invading race. The silence was oppressive. No sound came from the black woods, invisible beyond the ebony masses that were the overhanging bushes. Balthusa no longer heard the drums. They had been silent for hours. She kept blinking, unconsciously trying to see through the deep gloom. The dank night-smells of the river and the damp forest oppressed her. Somewhere, near by, there was a sound as if a big fish had flopped and splashed the water. Balthusa thought it must have leaped so close to the canoe that it had struck the side, for a slight quiver vibrated the craft. The boat's stern began to swing, slightly away from the shore. The woman behind her must have let go of the projection she was gripping. Balthusa twisted her head to hiss a warning, and could just make out the figure of her companion, a slightly blacker bulk in the blackness.
The woman did not reply. Wondering if she had fallen asleep, Balthusa reached out and grasped her shoulder. To her amazement, the woman crumpled under her touch and slumped down in the canoe. Twisting her body half about, Balthusa groped for her, her heart shooting into her throat. Her fumbling fingers slid over the woman's throat--only the youth's convulsive clenching of her jaws choked back the cry that rose to her lips. Her finger encountered a gaping, oozing wound--his companion's throat had been cut from ear to ear.
In that instant of horror and panic Balthusa started up--and then a muscular arm out of the darkness locked fiercely about her throat, strangling her yell. The canoe rocked wildly. Balthusa' knife was in her hand, though she did not remember jerking it out of her boot, and she stabbed fiercely and blindly. She felt the blade sink deep, and a fiendish yell rang in her ear, a yell that was horribly answered. The darkness seemed to come to life about her. A bestial clamor rose on all sides, and other arms grappled her. Borne under a mass of hurtling bodies the canoe rolled sidewise, but before she went under with it, something cracked against Balthusa' head and the night was briefly illuminated by a blinding burst of fire before it gave way to a blackness where not even stars shone.
Beyond the Black River Again Page 3