The sand became covered with coarse grass, which in turn changed to meadowland. But Sander disliked this too-open country. He could see a dark line across the horizon that marked the beginning of wooded land. While his people were of the open plains to the west, they also knew northern woods, and he recognized the value of finding cover.
However, he was enough a judge of travelers’ distances to be sure he could not reach that forest before nightfall. What he wanted now was a defensible camp site, if Rhin’s instinct was proven correct and they were to face some danger out of the dark.
He would not dare a fire tonight, wanting no beacon that might draw anyone—or anything—that prowled this country. So at last he settled on a stand of rocks, huddled together as if the stones themselves had drawn close for comfort in an hour of need.
Jerking up handfuls of grass, he arranged it into a nest. Then he brought out the dried fish and shared with Rhin. Ordinarily, the koyot would have gone off hunting on his own. But it would seem that this night he was not about to leave Sander.
As the young man watched the twilight draw in, felt the chill of the night winds which bore strange scents from the sea, his weariness grew. He could hear nothing save the wash of the waves and the sounds of birds. And although Rhin pricked up his ears to listen with all his might, he did not yet show any signs of real alarm.
Tired though Sander was from the day’s journeying, he could not sleep. Over him arched the sky sparkling with the eyes of the night. The Rememberers said those were other suns, very far away, and around them perhaps moved worlds like their own. But to Sander they had always seemed like the eyes of strange, aloof creatures, who watched the short lives of men with more indifference than interest. He tried to think about the star eyes, but his mind kept returning to the horrors of the raided village. What would it be like, he wondered with a shiver, to be suddenly set upon by men out of the sea who wanted to slay, to destroy, to dip their hands in blood?
The Mob had fought for their lives, but only once, in Sander’s memory, against their kind. That had been when a terrifying people with light skin and wild pale eyes had come down to raid their herd. Mainly their struggle was against cold and famine and sickness, warring against a hard land rather than mankind. Their smiths forged the weapons and the tools for that struggle, not many of the kinds meant to drink man-blood.
Sander had heard tales of the sea slavers. Sometimes he had thought that those, too, were inventions of the Traders, who created fearsome horrors to fill the land they did not want others to explore. For the Traders were notoriously tight-fisted when it came to their own profits. But after this day he could believe that man was more ruthless than a full winter storm. Now he shivered a little, not from the touch of the sea breeze, but because of what his imagination suggested might exist in this wilderness so unknown to him.
Sander put out a hand for the reassuring touch of Rhin’s furry hide. At the same moment the koyot leaped to his feet and growled in warning. Rhin faced not the sea, but inland. Plainly the animal had decided that there was some menace slinking through the night.
With so little visibility, the dart thrower was no good. Sander drew his long belt knife, which was really a short sword. He crouched upon one knee with the rocks a firm wall at his back, and listened. There seemed to be a slight shuffling ahead. Rhin growled again. Now Sander caught a trace of musky odor. He thought he had seen a shadow, moving so swiftly its shape blurred.
A hissing out of the dark became a loud snarl. Rhin advanced a step, stiff-legged, plainly alert against attack. Sander desperately regretted the fire he had not lit. To face such an unknown menace kindled one of mankind’s age-old fears.
Yet the thing did not attack as Sander expected it to do. He heard that challenging hiss, and he judged from Rhin’s reaction that the koyot thought this unknown to be a formidable opponent. Still, whatever it was stayed beyond the boundaries where Sander might sight it against the lighter rocks. A shrill whistle came out of the night, followed by a flash of light. It shone straight into Sander’s eyes, dazzling him, though he flung up his arm in an involuntary gesture to ward off the blinding glare.
Under the shadow of his hand he watched an animal glide forward, a sinuous body seeming more like a snake than a furred species. It arose upon its haunches, still hissing, until its head was nearly level with his own. Behind it a smaller edition of itself, much darker in color, hugged the ground. Neither of that pair carried the light.
“Stand—” The command from behind the source of the light was an emphatic order. Another followed: “Drop your knife!”
Sander was sure only the will of the speaker held the threatening animals in check, but he shook his head in refusal.
“I do not obey the orders of unknown who skulk in the dark,” he returned. “I am not a hunter or harmer of men.”
“Blood cries for blood, stranger,” snapped the voice. “Behind you streams blood—kin-blood. If there is an accounting, then it is mine, seeing that no one else lives in Padford now—”
“I came to a town of the dead,” Sander returned. “If you seek blood for blood, look elsewhere, stranger. When I rode from the south, there were only the dead within half-burned walls.”
The light held steady on him and no answer came forth. But that the stranger had been willing to speak without immediate attack was, Sander believed, in his favor.
“It is true that you are no Sea Shark,” the voice observed slowly.
Sander could understand the words. But the accent with which they were spoken differed both from that of the Mob and that of the Traders.
“Who are you?” Now the voice sharpened in a new demand.
“I am Sander, once of Jak’s Mob, and I am a smith.”
“Soooo?” The voice drawled that as if not quite believing. “And where tents your Mob this night, smith?”
“Westward.”
“Yet you travel east. Smiths are not wanderers, stranger. Or is there blood guilt and kin-death lying in your back trail?”
“No. My father, who was smith, died, and they would have it that I was not skilled enough to take his place. Thus I took out-rights—” He was growing irritated. That he must patiently answer this quizzing out of the dark stirred his anger. Now he boldly asked in return:
“Who are you?”
“One not to meddle with, stranger!” snapped that other. “But it seems you speak the truth and so are not meat for us this night.”
The light snapped out instantly. He could hear a stirring in the dark. Rhin whined in relief. Though the koyot could be a formidable fighter when he wished, it was plain he preferred the absence of those animals and whoever controlled them to their presence.
Sander himself felt tension seep away. The voice was gone, taking with it the strange hounds of its hunting. He settled back, and after a while he slept.
2
Sander’s slumber was full of dreams in which dead men arose to face him with broken weapons in their slack hands. He roused now and again, sweating, hardly sure of what was dream and what reality. He could then hear sometimes a soft growl deep in Rhin’s throat, as if the koyot scented something dangerous. Yet the voice and the light were surely gone.
By the first hint of dawn Sander was ready to move on. This seemed to him a haunted land. Perhaps the unburied dead of the town oppressed his spirit. The sooner he was well away from such an ill-omened place, the better. However, he made a quick survey of the ground where the night before that half-seen beast had reared up in the light.
That truly had been no dream, for there were paw marks deep-set in the soil, pads and claws in clear impression. Beyond, he discovered a single other print, small and distinct, unmistakably human. Rhin sniffed at the tracks and again growled. It was plain from the swing of the koyot’s head that he little liked what his own special senses reported. Another reason to be on their way.
Sander did not even wait to eat. He swung up on the riding pad, and Rhin trotted off at a pace that soon carried them well into the tough grass of the lowlands, parallel with the sea. The passing of the koyot stirred into life some birds, and Sander uncoiled his sling, made ready a pebble, brought down two of those fugitives. Once away, where he could light a fire, there would be food.