Keeping to the broken foothills was the best answer. The enemy mounts, larger and much heavier than Rhin, needed room in which to maneuver. They could not crawl along the ground as the koyot now prudently moved.
Still, to hug the side of the heights made for a very slow advance. The one advantage was the many hiding places the rough exterior of the slopes offered.
Luckily, the White Ones appeared to have no thought of immediate exploration here. Perhaps they feared other opponents beside the water things they had so easily routed. This land was made for ambushes. A handful of the Mob, had they darts enough, might tumble the whole of the White Ones’ tribe into swift death. Sander was certain he had not sighted any dart throwers among that band. Surely, if the riders had had such weapons they would have loosed them at the amphibians.
Their creeping carried them well past the riders at last. Now Sander waved Fanyi and Rhin to their feet. A screen of debris, studded with outthrust masses of stone and eroded metal, stood as if it had been intended as a barricade. Behind that, although they could not hurry, at least they made much better time.
Twice Sander climbed the crest of the barricade. It was really a vast layer of completely fused material, which must have broken from the heights behind it, to form a jagged foothill. From cover there he could survey the back trail.
He marked the ruts of the road, which still ran along the bank of the lake. The riders were now following it at a slow walk. Plainly, the White Ones were not pushing their pace.
Finally, the leading rider slipped from his beast, with the others following suit. Their mounts strode out into the shallows of the lake where some green of water plants not yet stricken by frost showed. Dipping their heads, the animals wrenched off great mouthfuls of the vegetation, champing lustily. The men had taken up their position beside a large jutting rock and were opening their saddle bags.
Sander realized that he, too, was hungry. But they could not linger here. The more distance they put between themselves and those scouts, the better pleased he would be.
His party worked their way on, discarding no caution, through great masses of refuse crushed by the ancient waves and left by the draining sea. Sander longed now and then to test some bit of metal he saw embedded in that debris. With this at hand—why had the Traders ever sought the more eroded and destroyed city? Or had that trail been meant to lead here in order to plunder this huge chaos?
Yet there were no signs of any delving about. In fact, Sander believed, it would be very chancy to try it. Now and again, just as the mounds in the city had been trimmed by a brisk wind, these masses broke loose and came crashing down. So he kept one eye overhead, to avoid passing near any height that looked unstable.
They halted at last because they were too tired to keep going. Sharing out their meat and water, Fanyi gave a great sigh. Rhin lay panting heavily after he had gulped his portion. The humans’ boots had suffered from the broken ways over which they had come. Sander cut loose the bundle of uncured hare skins and tied them around their feet, fur side in, hoping to provide a little cushion and protect what was left of their boots.
Fanyi rubbed the calves of her slim brown legs. “Never have I traveled such a trail as this,” she commented. “Those ruts were bad enough, but this scrambling up and down is far worse. And how long will it last?”
He knew no more than she. The crumbled stones, the lava-engulfed wrack of the ancient sea, was everywhere. Some peaks of rock rose mountain-high, plainly up-thrust from the earth’s crust at nearly the same time the sea had swirled in. It was a nightmare land, and Sander gave thanks to fortune that they had traveled it so far with no more than scraped skin or a bruised and battered hand, to show. It was plain that they must hole up before the coming of night. Even Fanyi’s precious Before light could not guide them over such rough ground.
The lake was so large that even with all their traveling they had not yet reached the western end. It tantalized Sander every time he climbed to view a path before them. But he had been warned by the adventures of the White Ones. To go near that occupied water would be an act of folly. They must keep to these harsh, broken lands for safety.
Some time before sundown they chanced upon such a place as Sander thought would serve. Two massive slides from the heights had spread into the lower land, now forming walls of fused fragments. Between these lay a stretch of relatively smooth ground. They dared not light a fire, even if they could have found wood. Fanyi had recalled the fishers, and she curled down between their furred bodies, perhaps warmer so than she might have been by a fire. Sander had Rhin.
The animals rested quietly, displaying no unease. They ate quickly, with evident relish, the chunks of dried meat Sander doled out, though the fishers were so easily satisfied the smith suspected that even in this desolate land they had found game during their earlier roaming. However, none of the three showed any interest in vanishing again as the night closed in. When the dark was really thick, Sander borrowed Fanyi’s Before light. Shading that with one hand, he made his way down to the edge of the slip that formed the western wall of their refuge.
There he snapped the light off and stared intently eastward. If the White Ones still followed the wagon trail, they might not be adverse to setting up a camp with a fire. But he caught no sight of any flame.
It was only when he turned again west, ready to grope his way back to their own hollow, that he sighted a spark of what could only be firelight. He was sure that the White Ones had not ridden past them during the afternoon. Therefore those scouts had not lit this beacon. For beacon it appeared to him, so high was it set. As he watched, it began to blink, slowly, in a pattern of off-and-on.
In the same fashion the Mob sent warnings across country when there was danger to the herds. But these blinks bore no resemblance to the code in which he had been trained. Sander whirled around, facing east again.
Yes, he had been right with that guess! There was another high-placed spark of light that blinked in answer. White Ones? Somehow he doubted it. The men who had scattered the amphibians this morning appeared to be riding a new, unknown trail. But who else would signal among these tormented hills?
Traders? That seemed far more of a possibility. All that Sander knew concerning the strictly kept secrets of their own places arose in his mind. They could well have posted sentries in the heights, sentries who had marked both the coming of the White Ones and Sander’s own party. Were the White Ones as much enemies of the Traders as they had proven to be for the Mob on the plains?
At this moment he fervently hoped so. That fact would make his own position and that of Fanyi much the stronger. A mutual enemy could draw together even un-friends in a time of peril.
The light to the east gave a last wink and vanished. As he turned his head, he saw that that to the west was also gone. He crept carefully back to their camp and settled down beside the koyot. He could hear Fanyi’s breathing through the dark, even and peaceful. He guessed that she was already asleep.
But Sander did not follow her swiftly. There was something that seemed to loom over him, spreading outward from the congealed storm wrack. This had been a place of death, not only of men, but also of their ambitions, their dreams, all that they had fashioned. If any earth-tied spirits existed, where better could one hear their broken whispering, their pleas for life, their fear of a death so terrifying that their minds could not imagine the blotting out of their world?
Some of that horror that had gripped him in the morning, when he and Fanyi had looked for the first time upon this place, stirred in him now. He was cold with more than the chill of the night. Almost, he could hear screams, shouts of those lost and long gone.
Sternly, Sander set himself to the regaining of good sense. His lips moved as he recited the power words of the smith. A man made tools and weapons with his hands—after a pattern his mind sketched for him. Those who used them in time died and were laid there in their barrows. This was the natural way of life. The dead who might have perished here in the Dark Times—they were long gone. And the things they fashioned were not the things Sander understood. He might be of their distant kin, but he was not of their clan; they had no hold on him.