"Run!" Jack said, and he set the example. As he did so, he tried to search both sides of the forest path, for Ed might have planted some more men there for ambush. It did not seem likely. As he remembered, Ed had only had five men with him when he left the cadmi.
The path took another sudden turn, and they were going in the opposite direction and on a steeper slope. R'li, behind him, said, "The ruins are only about two hundred yards away. There are many places to hide there. I know the place fairly well."
Jack, running along the side of the path, could look down through the trees. There were men there, toiling up the mountainside. They were trying to short-cut to intercept the three, but they would have done much better to stick to the road. He looked behind him, saw no one, and slowed to a fast walk. No use burning himself out and getting out of breath.
R'li had stopped. "Where's Polly?"
"I don't know where the little bitch is. Damn her! What's she up to now?"
"I think she dropped back to take some more potshots," she said. "She's courageous, whatever else she might be. Though I think it's part madness."
"She wants revenge on Ed Wang," he said. "But I didn't think she'd risk getting herself killed for it."
He decided not to go back to look for her. She'd made a foolish move, and he was not going to put R'li's life in jeopardy because of her.
"Damn her! If they take her alive, they'll rape her to death. I know what Ed planned for her!"
They rounded another turn, and they were on the plateau. The ruins were before them. And above them.
Even in his concern with their danger, he was awed. It must have been a cyclopean metropolis when it had been intact, before some cataclysm had tumbled it. There were a few buildings still half erect, and these towered several hundred feet high. They were constructed of tremendous blocks of granite and basalt, each a fifty-foot cube. The façades must once have been overlaid with a thin layer of some plaster or other material. Where it still remained, the material showed bright colors. Murals must have been painted there, for there were portions of scenes. Most numerous were creatures that looked like ursucentaurs, like the being that Kliz had portrayed in his painting. There were also men -- horstels, rather -- serving the Arra. And there were other semihuman beings, creatures that resembled men but had brutish faces and hairy skins.
R'li said, "The Arra transported others here as their slaves. Their descendants went completely back to savagery or even lower after the blowup. They are the things you call mandrakes and werewolves. Be careful. Some may be living in these ruins."
"Where the hell is Polly?" he said, then fell silent as yells came from the trees below on the slope. The naked figure of the girl burst out of the forest, and she was running up the road. A moment later, four men appeared about a hundred yards behind her.
"Looks like she got one," Jack said. "But she missed Ed."
He told R'li to get behind one of the huge blocks lying on the ground. He took a position behind another and waited. If the men were stupid enough to follow here closely onto the plateau, they could be disposed of with a few shots. He hoped they were.
But Polly trotted up to them, took a place by him, and they waited in vain. Ed Wang was not going to be trapped.
Polly had caught her breath by then. She said, "They must be working their way up the slope. They'll slip in among the ruins someplace farther down."
Jack did not want to have them behind him. He called to R'li, and the three trotted into the ruins. They threaded between the fallen structures, sometimes forced to take wide detours around vast heaps. To avoid being silhouetted if they climbed over the blocks, they stuck to ground level.
During one of their stops to watch and listen, R'li said, "Quiet! I think. . ." She got down on the ground and placed her ear next to it.
Jack felt the hairs of his neck prickle, and a coldness ran over his skin. The place was so silent. There was not even a wind; the harsh cries of the slashlarks, always heard in the forest, were absent. Yet, if he remembered correctly, they had been present only a minute ago.
R'li arose. She said, in child-talk, "Thrruk."
"More than one?" he said.
"I think only one. She might just be passing through. Or she might be Mar-Kuk looking for the manling who has her thumb."
"If she'll go away happy, I'll give it back to her," he said. "No hard feelings on either part."
"Don't give it to her," Polly said. "If she shows up, threaten to destroy it. She won't know how you can do that, but she won't take the chance.''
"Polly's right," R'li said.
She suggested that the best plan would be to go to the other, or back, side of the ruins. They could skirt the edge of the plateau for a while, then descend into the Argulh Valley. The path down was not one that she would take if she had a choice. But it would be safer than trying to return to the original road.
The city was vast. It was approximately two hours to dusk before they reached its northern limits. Abruptly, the last of the fallen blocks gave way to a level and treeless plain. This, empty of vegetation except for knee-high grass and a few winnybushes, extended for a half mile. Then, it broke. The Argulh Valley lay below, but they could see only the opposite side. Above it was the twenty-thousand-foot-high face of the Plel Massif.
For about half an hour, the three walked along the blocks. Jack felt nervous about crossing the plain while it was still day. R'li stopped them and said, "The path starts there. Where that cone-shaped boulder sticks up over the edge of the drop-off."
"Hour and a half until sundown," he said. "We'll rest."
"The path is called so only by courtesy," the siren replied. "It's bad enough when you've light to see it by. By night. . . I don't know. We might very easily fall. But if we can get down a little way by the light, we can rest for the night on a ledge. Moreover, the ledge is easily defended."
Jack sighed and said, "All right. But let's run that half mile to the drop-off."
They kept their bows in their hands while they sprinted. No sooner had they taken a few steps than they heard a cry behind them. Jack looked behind him and saw Ed Wang and his three followers running out from behind a stone block.
R'li wailed, "We'll have to take a stand by the drop-off! If we go down the path now, they can drop rocks on us or shoot us! We'd be helpless!"
Jack said nothing but kept running. He was stopped by a great bellow that could only have come from the massive throat of a dragon. The two women also stopped and turned to look. The creature was Mar-Kuk, for she was missing a thumb.
Now the pursuers were pursued. They ran frantically towards the three who had lately been their quarry. Ed waved his bow and shouted. Although they could not hear what he was saying above the roars of the thing behind him, they guessed the sense. He wanted to join his forces with theirs and make a common stand against the dragon.
"Let them join us," Jack said. "It may be our only chance."
One of Ed's men, Al Merrimoth, had fallen behind the others. Mar-Kuk steadily overtook him. Then Merrimoth pitched forward. He rolled over to face the monster, threw his hands over his face, and hence did not see the great foot that descended on him and crushed out his life.
Given grace by Mar-Kuk's pause to take care of their comrade, Ed Wang and his friends reached their goal. They were sobbing for breath, but they turned and ranged themselves by the side of Jack and the two women. R'li said, "Let me try to talk to her first."
She stepped forward and called out in child-talk, "Mar-Kuk! I invoke the trucespeech of the cadmus folk! May your mother and your grandmothers to the beginning of the Great Egg curse you and reject you if you fail to honor it!"
Mar-Kuk stopped running, her legs rigid and her body and tail bending back to keep from falling forward on her face. Her huge feet slid through the grass for several yards before she managed to brake to a stop.
"I honor the trucespeech," she said in her incredibly deep voice. "But only for the allotted time."
"What do you want?" R'li said, although she knew well enough and the dragon knew she knew.
"What do I want?" Mar-Kuk's voice soared up until it almost became a soprano screech. "By the Blessed Inside-out Egg, I want my thumb! And I want the body of the man who has defiled me by cutting it off and keeping it next to his evil male flesh!"
"He'll return it to you so that you may ritually cleanse yourself and return to the well-lit womb of the Grandest Mother when you die. But only if you swear to go away and never to harm him or those you see with him. You must swear by the Utmost Pain the Grandest Mother endured when she laid the Eight-Cornered Egg of the First Male."
Mar-Kuk's jaw dropped, and she blinked. Her hands clasped and she clenched them against each other.
R'li said quietly to Jack, "I don't think she'll do it. If she swears, then she'll be unable to harm you without condemning herself to a cold shadowy motherless hell. No thrruk has ever broken that oath. But if she does swear, then she still may not go to her idea of heaven. Ritual cleansing, in this case at least, will take years. And if she should happen to die before the rituals were completed, she'd be doomed."
"At least, she'd have a chance then."
"I hope that's the conclusion she'll come to," said R'li. She dropped her voice even lower and told him what to do. He nodded, then began to walk, with as casual a manner as he could adopt under the circumstances, toward the edge of the plateau. He did not turn his head to see what was going on behind him. But he could imagine Mar-Kuk's eyes on him and her indecision. When he was within a few yards of the edge, he heard a great cry. Wheeling, he saw that the dragon had made up her mind. She was charging toward him.
R'li and Polly ran to one side. Their bows were held away from their bodies, so that R'li must have told Polly what to expect. However, Ed and his two men made a mistake. They held their ground until they had loosed three shafts, two of which struck her. Both bounced off the thick hide.
The men then turned to run, but two of them were too slow. Mar-Kuk changed her course slightly; her long tail flicked out. Ed escaped, but the other two were hurled to the ground. Their bones splintered with a cracking sound.
She was a terrifying creature to see, so terrifying that Jack almost lost his nerve and tried to escape over the edge of the cliff and onto the "path." But R'li had insisted that he must hold firm. If he did not, they would all be lost, for Mar-Kuk's rage would be all-destructive.
He stood at the very lip of the drop-off and held the thumb at arm's length over the abyss. All he had to do was to open his hand, and the thumb would drop all the four thousand feet to the bottom.
Again, Mar-Kuk braked herself and slid on the grass. This time she only managed to come to a halt a few feet from Jack Cage.
Her bellow rang out. "Don't do it!"
Jack shook his head and spoke loudly and slowly in child-talk. "If you kill me or force me to drop this, Mar-Kuk, your thumb will be lost forever to you. I doubt very much that you could find it. It'd take you far too long to get to the bottom of the valley. You can't go down the cliffside here; you're too big. And the chances are that the animals would have eaten it, anyway, before you could get there."
She broke into a series of meaningless syllables. He guessed she was swearing in the original language of the dragons. R'li had told him that the superior prestige of horstel speech had long ago made the dragons adopt that in place of their own. But they retained certain phrases from the lost tongue for ritual and cursing.
Jack tried to smile as if he were master of the situation and found her amusing. That columnar bulk and horrendous face and the wrath that filled her reduced his effort to a brief flicker at the corner of his lips. His knees were shaking, and the hand that held the thumb quivered.
R'li said, "We'll give it back to you when we reach the Idoh Pass. Provided that you don't try to come after us then. And you must promise to accompany us and protect us."
Mar-Kuk gargled with frustration, then swallowed it. "All right."
Jack continued to hold the thumb out until R'li had made the dragon give a formal oath. Then, his arm weary, he walked back to the unicorn-hide bag and put the thumb within. Mar-Kuk eyed it, but she made no move, then or thereafter, to seize it.
Jack and R'li dragged the bodies to the edge and tumbled them over. Much as he wanted to bury them, he had no digging tools.
Mar-Kuk complained that she was being deprived of easy meat. She became silent when R'li explained that they had gotten rid of the corpses to keep from attracting mandrakes. Jack wondered what manner of beasts these could be to make even the colossus Mar-Kuk want to avoid them.
Ed stood glowering at them, his bow and knife at his feet, where Polly had ordered him to drop them. She stood a few yards away with her arrow cocked, ready to fire.
R'li's voice came from behind Jack. "You had best kill him now."
He was surprised. "That doesn't sound like you!"
"You can't release him with his weapons. If you do, he'll be trying to stab us while we're asleep. He hates. If you turn him out without weapons. . ."
"He can make new ones, just as he made those. . ."
"Not a chance. Didn't you hear what Polly said? She hates, too, and she'll go after him. He'll die as no one should, in the most agonizing and the slowest way. I know those witches; I know Polly."
"It's too bad I didn't kill him when he was after us," he said. "But I can't now, not in cold blood."
"You killed a mad dog once. He was your pet; you loved him. You don't love Ed."
"I'm in the wilderness with two of the most vicious bitches that ever hounded a man!" he said. He walked away, but he knew that she spoke truly and that she spoke out of humanity. Besides, Ed had tried to murder all of them and more than once.
R'li walked over slowly to Polly and stood by her for a moment. Jack watched them. What was she up to? They seemed to be talking about nothing serious. Polly was laughing.
Suddenly R'li struck. Her fist took Polly on the side of her jaw, and the woman crumpled. She fell to her knees and hands, where she remained on all fours for a few seconds. That was all the siren needed. She scooped up Polly's bow and arrow, fitted the shaft to the string, and aimed at Ed.
He came out of his freeze, yelled, and started to run. There was only one place he could possibly take refuge, over the edge of the plateau. R'li's arrow caught him in the back just as he started to throw himself to the ground to halt his forward speed. Undoubtedly he had intended to continue the roll with the hope that the path, which he had only heard them mention, would be directly below. But he staggered forward, yelling, the shaft sticking from his left shoulderblade, and went headlong over. His yell floated up for some time. Then, silence.
Jack came running. Polly got up, rubbing her jaw, and said, "You bitch! You cheated me!"
"He's dead now," R'li said. "Forget about him."
"I won't forget about you!"
"I'll tell Mar-Kuk to keep an eye on you," R'li said calmly.
All four went back into the ruins. Mar-Kuk, who was leading, stopped with an exclamation. Jack followed her pointing hand -- the thumbless one -- and saw the fresh droppings of a large animal.
"Mandrake!" she said.
"They coil around in a characteristic pattern and always have that little tip," R'li explained to Jack. "Well, we'll have to pick a good place for certain. Hurry! The sun'll be down in a few minutes."
"Here's a nice hole," Mar-Kuk said. She stood sniffing in front of a square entrance formed by a tumble of the great blocks. Within the darkness was a room large enough for all. At a few words from R'li, the dragon went off to search for firewood. The others entered their lodging for the night. An examination showed that the way by which they had come was the only entrance.
Mar-Kuk returned fifteen minutes later, her arms full of branches, twigs, and a sizable log. She placed the stuff on the ledge stone, squeezed her bulk through, and then arranged the wood. With flintstones and shavings, Jack soon had a fire blazing. It burned comp
letely across the entrance and made a fine fire except that occasionally the wind blew smoke in. They cooked some unicorn and ate. Mar-Kuk downed most of it, said, "Never fear, little ones. I'll find another el [child-talk for unicorn] for you tomorrow."
"How can she go with us?" Jack whispered to R'li. "She can't get down that trail."
"We'll go with her the long way around. It'll take more time, but it'll be much safer. Why are you whispering?"
He gestured with his head at the bulk behind them. "She makes me nervous."
R'li kissed Jack on the cheek and patted his back. Polly said, "I'm sorry my presence has inconvenienced you two so much. But don't let me bother you. Have at it. I'll enjoy watching, and I might even ask for leavings."
"You're a vile bitch!" Jack said.
"I'm an honest one," she replied. "But.I meant what I said. I've seen you hugging her and kissing her and fondling those wonderful breasts when you thought I wasn't looking. You two must have known each other for some time. Why isn't she pregnant? Or doesn't she want to be?"
Jack gasped and said, "Wha-what? You know humans and horstels can't have children."
Polly laughed loudly and for a long time. Mar-Kuk, in the rear of the chamber, began to stir uneasily. At last, Polly quit. She said, "Hasn't your love told you the truth of that story the fat priests give you? Of course, you two can have a baby! There are thousands of hybrids living right now, most of them in Socinia."
"Is this true, R'li? Why didn't you tell me?"
"Jack, we had little time together. We did a lot of talking, but it was mostly about our love for each other. We couldn't cover everything you might be interested in. Besides, you were in no danger of making me pregnant. The Wiyr can have babies only when they want them. When the population regulators tell them they can, rather. We have always kept a close watch on the balance of birth and death. You humans don't. That's why you are outnumbering us and are so hungry to take over our lands."
"We witches have known how to prevent conception for some time, too," Polly said. "You take certain herbs, mix them, swallow them at certain times."
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