Something in the solemn tones of the big man’s voice reached into Fors. He had never had a real friend, his alien blood had set him too far apart from the other boys of the Eyrie. And his relationship with his father had been that of pupil with teacher. But he knew now that he would never willingly let this dark-skinned warrior go out of his life again, and that where Arskane chose to go, there he would follow.
When the sun was almost overhead they were in a wilderness of trees where it was necessary to go slowly to avoid gaping cellar holes and lengths of moldering beams. But in this maze Lura picked up the trail of a wild heifer and within the hour they had brought it down and were broiling fresh meat. With enough for perhaps two more meals packed in the raw hide they went on, Fors’ small compass their guide.
Abruptly they came out on the edge of the old place of flying men. So abruptly they were almost shocked into dodging back into the screen of trees when they first saw what lay there.
Both were familiar with the pictures of such machines. But here they were real, standing in ordered rows—some of them. And the rest were piled in battered confusion, torn and rent or half engulfed in shell holes.
“Planes!” Arskane’s eyes gleamed. “The sky-riding planes of my fathers’ fathers! Before we fled the shaking of the mountains we went to look our last upon the ones which brought the first men of our clan to that land—and they were like unto some of these. But here is a whole field of planes!”
“These were struck dead before they reached the sky,” Fors pointed out. A strange feeling of excitement burned inside him. The ground machines, even the truck which had helped them out of the city, never moved him so. These winged monsters—how great—how very great in knowledge must the Old Ones have been! That they could ride among the clouds in these—where now their sons must crawl upon the ground! Hardly knowing what he did Fors ventured out and drew his hand sadly along the body of the nearest plane. He was so small beside it—a whole family clan might have once ridden in its belly—
“It was with such as these that the Old Ones sowed death over the world—”
“But to ride in the clouds,” Fors refused Arskane’s somber mood, “above the earth—They must have been godlike—the Old Ones!”
“Say rather devil-like! See—” Arskane took him by the arm and led him between the two orderly rows on the edge of the field to look at the series of ragged, ugly craters which made a churned mess of the center of the airport. “Death came thus from the air, and men dropped that death willingly upon their fellows. Let us remember that, brother.”
They passed around the wreckage, following the lines of unwrecked planes until their way led to a building. There were many bones here. Many men had died trying to get the machines into the air—too late.
When they reached the building, both turned and looked back at the path of destruction and the two lines of curiously untouched bombers still waiting. The sky they would never again travel was clear and blue with small, clean-cut white clouds drifting across it in patterns. In the west other and darker clouds were gathering. A storm was in the making.
“This,” Arskane pointed down the devastated field, “must never happen again. No matter what heights our sons rise to—we must not tear the earth against each other—Do you agree, brother?”
Fors met those dark burning eyes squarely. “It is agreed. And what I can do, that I shall. But—where men once flew they must fly again! That also we must swear to!”
9
Into the Blow-Up Land
Fors hunched over the table, leaning on his elbows, hardly daring to breathe lest the precious cloth-backed square he was studying crumble into powdery dust. Maps—such a wealth of maps he had never dreamed of. He could put finger tip to the point of blue which was the edge of the great lake—and from that he could travel across—straight to the A-T-L-A-N-T-I-C Ocean. Why, that was the fabulous sea! He looked up impatiently as Arskane came into this treasure room.
“We are here—right here!”
“And here we are like to stay forever if we do not bestir ourselves—”
Fors straightened up. “What—?”
“I have but come from the tower at the end of this building. Something alive moves at the far end of the field of machines. It is a shadow but it slides with too much purpose to be overlooked by a cautious—”
“A deer,” began Fors, knowing that it was not.
Arskane gave a short bark of humor-lacking laughter. “Does a deer creep upon its belly and spy around corners, brother? No, I think that our friends from the city have found us out at last. And I do not like being caught in this place—no, I do not like that at all!”
Fors left the maps regretfully. How Jarl would have delighted in them. But to attempt to move them would be to destroy them and they would have to remain—as they had through the countless years. He picked up his quiver and checked the remaining arrows. Only ten left. And when they were gone he would have only short sword and hunting knife—
Arskane must have picked that thought right out of his companion’s mind for now he was nodding. “Come.” He went back to the flight of stairs which led them in a spiral up and up until they stood in a place that had once been completely walled with glass. “See there—and what do you make of that?”
The southerner stabbed a finger southeast. Fors picked out an odd scar in the vegetation there, a wide wedge of land where nothing grew. Under the sun the soil had a strange metallic gleam. He had seen the raw rocks of mountain gorges and the cleared land where the Old Ones had once had concrete surfaces, but this was different. In a land where trees and grass had reclaimed their own nothing green encroached upon the wedge.
“Desert—” was all he could suggest doubtfully. But there should be no deserts in this section of the country.
“That it is not! Remember, I am desert born and that is no natural wasteland such as I have ever known. It is something the like of which I have not stumbled upon in all my journeying!”
“Hush!” Fors’ head snapped around. He was sure of that sound, the distant scrape of metal against metal. His eyes ran along the lines of the silent machines. And there was a flicker of movement halfway down the second line!
He screened his eyes against the sun, crowding up to the frame of the vanished glass. Under the shadow of the spreading wing of a plane squatted a gray-black blot. And it was sniffing the ground!
His whisper hardly rose above the rasp of Arskane’s quick breathing. “Only one—”
“No. Look within the curve of that bush—to the right—”
Yes, the southerner was right. Against the green, one could see the bestial head. The Beast Things almost always hunted as a pack. It was too much to hope that this time they did not. Fors’ hand dropped to his sword hilt.
“We must go!”
Arskane’s sandals already thudded on the stairs. But before he left the tower, Fors saw that gray thing dart forward from under the plane. And two more such lumps detached themselves from the covering of trees along the ruined runway, taking cover among the machines. The pack was closing in.
“We must keep to the open,” Arskane warned. “If we can stay ahead and not allow them to corner us we shall have a fair chance.”
There was another door out of the building, one which gave upon the other half of the field. Here was a maze of tangled wreckage. Shell holes pocked the runways; machines and defense guns had been blasted too. They swung around the sky-pointing muzzle of a mounted gun. And in the same instant the air was rent with a horrible screech, answered by Lura’s snarl of rage. A thrashing tangle of fighting cat and her prey rolled out almost under their feet.
Arskane swung his club with a sort of detached science. He struck down, hard. Thin, bone-gray arms went wide and limp and Lura was clawing a dead body. A missile from the wreckage grazed Fors’ head sending him spinning against the gun. He stumbled over the body from which came a filthy stench. Then Arskane jerked him to his feet and pulled him under the up-ended nose of a plane.
Still shaking his ringing head Fors allowed his companion to guide him as they turned and dodged. Once he heard the ring of metal as Beast Thing dart struck. Arskane pushed him to the left, the momentum of the southerner’s shove carrying both of them into cover.