He rounded the jumble of wrecked machines. They must have been traveling along the road in a line when death had struck mysteriously, struck so that some of the machines had rammed others or wavered off to pile up in wild wreckage. Others stood solitary as if the dying driver had been able to bring them to a safe halt before he succumbed. Fors tried to pick out the outlines and associate what he saw with the ancient pictures. That—that was certainly a “tank,” one of the moving fortresses of the Old Ones. Its gun still pointed defiantly to the sky. Two, four, five more he counted, and then gave up.
The column of machines stretched out in its forgotten disaster for almost a mile. Fors brushed along beside it in the waist-high weeds which bordered the road. He had an odd distaste for approaching the dead machines more closely, no desire to touch any of the bits of rusted metal. Here and there he saw one of the alternative-powered vehicles, seeming almost intact. But they were dead too. All of it was dead, in a horrible way. He experienced a vague feeling of contamination from just walking beside the wreckage.
There were guns on the moving forts, guns which still swung ready, and there had been men, hundreds of men. He could see their white bones mixed with the rust and the debris driven in by years of wind and storm. Guns and men—where had they been going when the end came? And what was the end? There were none of the craters he had been told were to be found where bombs had fallen—just smashed machines and men, as if death had come as a mist or a wind.
Guns and men on the march—maybe to repel invaders. The book of air-borne messages treasured in the Eyrie had spoken once or twice of invaders coming from the sky—enemies who had struck with paralyzing swiftness. But something must have happened in turn to that enemy—or else why had the invaders not made the land their own? Probably the answer to that question would never be known.
Fors reached the end of the blasted column. But he kept on walking along the clean earth until he topped a rise and could no longer sight the end of a wasted war. Then he dared once more to walk the road of the Old Ones.
3
The Dark Hunter
About half a mile farther on the shadow of a woodland swallowed up the road. Fors’ heart lifted when he saw it. These open fields were strange to a mountain-born man but he felt at home in a thick coat of trees such as the one before him now.
He was trying to remember the points on the big map which hung on the wall of the Star House, the map to which was added a tiny mark at the return of each roving explorer. This northern route crossed the wedge end of a portion of territory held loosely by Plainsmen. And the Plainsmen had horses—useless in the mountains and so untamed by his people—but very needful in this country of straight distances. To have a horse at his service now—
The cool of the woods lapped him in and he was at home at once, as was Lura. They padded on, their feet making but the faintest whisper of sound. It was a scent carried by a tiny puff of breeze which brought them up—Wood smoke!
Fors’ thought met Lura’s and agreed. She stood for a long moment, testing the air with her keener nostrils, and then she turned aside, pushing between two birches. Fors scraped after her. The guiding puff of wind was gone, but he could smell something else. They were approaching a body of water—not running water or the sound of its passing would be heard.
There was a break in the foliage ahead. He saw Lura flatten herself out on a rock surface which was almost the same color as her own creamy hide, flatten and creep. And he hunkered down to follow her example, the gritty stone biting knees and hands as he wormed out beside her.
They were belly down on a spur of rock which overhung the surface of a woods-hemmed lake. Not far beyond a thread of stream trickled away and he could spot two islands, the nearest joined to the mainland by a series of stepping stones. On the shores of this islet crouched someone very busy over a cooking fire.
The stranger was no mountaineer, that was certain. In the first place his wide-shouldered, muscular bronze body was bare to the waist and at least three shades darker in skin tint than the most deeply tanned of the Eyrie men. The hair on his round skull was black and tightly curled. He had strongly marked features with a wide-lipped mouth and flat cheekbones, his large dark eyes set far apart. His only clothing was a sort of breechclout kilt held in place by a wide belt from which hung the tassel-ornamented scabbard of a knife. The knife itself, close to eighteen inches of blue steel, flashed in his hand as he energetically cleaned a fresh-caught fish.
Stuck upright in the ground close to his shoulder were three short-shafted spears, a blanket of coarse reddish wool draped over the point of one. Smoke rose from the fire laid on a flat stone, but there was no indication as to whether the stranger had merely halted for a meal or had been camping on the islet.
As he worked the fisherman sang—a low, monotonous chant, which, as he listened to it, affected Fors queerly, sending an odd shiver up his backbone. This was no Plainsman either. And Fors was just as sure that he was not spying on one of the Beast Things. The few mountaineer men who had survived a meeting with them had painted a far different picture—they were never to be associated with peaceful fishing and an intelligent, pleasant face.
This dark-skinned newcomer was of a different breed. Fors rested his chin on his folded arms and tried to deduce from the evidence this stranger’s background—as was the duty of an explorer.
The lack of clothing, now—that meant that he was accustomed to a warmer climate. Such an outfit could only be worn here before fall closed in. He had those spears and—yes—that was a bow lying with its quiver beyond. But it was much shorter than the one Fors carried and did not appear to be made of wood but from some dark substance which reflected light from the sun.
He must come from a land where his race was all-powerful and had nothing to fear for he camped in the open and sang while he cooked as if he did not care if he attracted attention. And yet he did this on an island, more easily defended from attack than the shore itself.
Just then the fisherman impaled the cleaned fish on a sharpened twig and set it to broil while he got to his feet and hurled a baited line back into the water. Fors blinked. The man on the island must tower a good four or five inches over the tallest of the Eyrie men and his thatch of upstanding hair could not account for more than two inches of that difference. As he stood there, still humming, his hands skillfully adjusted the fishing line, he presented a picture of strength and power which would daunt even a Beast Thing.
The odor of the fish carried. Lura made a faint slurruping sound as it reached them. Fors hesitated. Should he hail the dark-skinned hunter, make the peace sign, and try to establish friendly relations or—
That question was decided for him. A shout tore the serene silence of the lake. The dark hunter moved—so fast that Fors was left gasping. Spears, blanket, bow—and the broiled fish—vanished with their owner. A bush quivered and then was still. The fire burned—on a deserted pebbled beach.
A second shout bore down wind, reinforced by a trampling crash, and down to the edge of the lake trotted a band of horses, mares mostly, each with a small foal running at her side. Urging them on were two riders, bent nearly flat on the backs of their mounts to escape the low sweeping branches of the trees. They herded the mares to water and waited for them to drink.
Fors almost forgot the dark hunter. Horses! He had seen pictures of them. But living horses! The age-old longing of his race—to possess one of those for his own—made a strange ache in his thigh muscles, as if he were already mounted upon one of the sleek backs.
One of the horse guards dismounted and was rubbing down the legs of his animal with handfuls of grass pulled up from the bank. He was undoubtedly a Plainsman. His sleeveless jerkin laced across the chest was almost twin to the one Fors wore. But his leggings were of hide and polished by hours of riding. He wore his hair shoulder length as the sign of free birth and it was held out of his eyes by a broad band on which was painted the sign of his family clan and tribe. The long lance which was the terrible weapon of the horsemen hung in its loops at his saddle and in addition he wore at his belt the curved, slashing sword which was the badge of his nation.