Or else, the more cynical among Skawpane’s citizens mused, they were controlled by idiocy on a cosmic scale.
* * * *
Shouldering his pack, grateful for the weight of cool water against his spine, Simna glanced often back the way they had come as they left the last of Skawpane’s twisted, warped buildings and equally skewed inhabitants behind.
“What do you think, bruther? When they get over their fear of your chilling little demonstration, will they come after us?”
Ehomba turned to have a look. Already the ominous outlines of the town were receding, swallowed up by intervening boulders and cliffs. Soon it would recede permanently into memory and nightmare.
“I doubt it, Simna. Many who sprang from the slaughterhouse to beset us died. Those who merely suffered a touch of cold are probably counting themselves fortunate. Behind all those oozing fangs and sharp-edged suckers there must lie intelligence of a sort.”
“Hoy,” the swordsman agreed, “and they can probably imagine what you’d do to them if they tried to give chase.” He clapped his rangy friend on the back.
“I do not know that I would, or could, do anything.” The herdsman protested mildly. “Really, if any of them came after us I think I would have to try and run away. I am very tired, my friend. You cannot imagine how these exertions drain me. To use the swords or the gifts in my backpack is difficult. I am not trained in the ways of the necromantic arts as are old Likulu or Maumuno Kaudom.”
“I know, I know.” Hearing only what he wanted to hear, the swordsman grinned broadly. “You’re just a rank amateur, a babe in the brush, a hopeless simpleton when it comes to matters of magic. So you’ve told me all along. Well, fine. Let it be that way, since you continue to insist it is so. I am satisfied with the consequences of your actions, if not the feeble explanations you offer for them.”